Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination, 1772–1922: Anti-Colonialism within Europe, by Róisín Healy

Abstract

In his November 1798 speech from the dock, Theobald Wolfe Tone linked his revolutionary endeavours to two famous predecessors: ‘I have attempted to follow the same line in which Washington succeeded and Kościuszko failed.’ Michael Balfe’s 1843 aria, ‘When the Fair Land of Poland’, remained a favourite in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century, while Lady Wilde (mother of Oscar) was one of many Irish poets who published pro-Poland verse. In the early twentieth century, Constance Markiewicz found inspiration in the sacrifices of Polish women. From the period of Poland’s three partitions in the eighteenth century to its re-emergence after the First World War, many Irish sympathised with the fate of the Poles, finding historical or religious links between their two lands. Róisín Healy’s monograph examines 150 years of Irish–Polish relations and discovers a sustained imaginative encounter, as Irish nationalists looked to their European neighbour for support and inspiration. Healy builds on the work of (among others) Brian Earls, Katarzyna Gmerek and John Merchant to produce a volume that is marked by thorough scholarship and nuanced argument. Though she alludes to the profound changes in Europe since Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, her focus is on the period from the first partition of Poland in 1772 to a partitioned Ireland’s independence in 1922. She is careful to avoid any monolithic pronouncements on the motives behind Irish representations of Poland or on their capacity to effect change. Similarly, she is careful to note at the onset that Poland was itself a bundle of potential national causes, with its Ruthenian and Ukrainian minorities as interested in self-rule from Poland as the Poles were from Russia, Prussia and Austria. What becomes clear is that most nineteenth-century Irish commentators overlooked such national complexities, shaping their idea of Poland to fit their own immediate needs.